Simple Marinades for Chicken

Chicken is a great meat for family dinners, and satisfies even the fussiest of children. Its mild flavor tends to appeal to young taste buds, and it’s also lean and therefore healthy. If you’re looking for new and interesting ways to flavour chicken, here are two tasty and simple recipes that use a marinade and might just inspire you to get creative in the kitchen.

Tasty salad days

When it comes to healthy chicken recipes, you can’t go far wrong with a warm Chinese-style salad. This chicken dish serves six, and you’ll need four skinless and boneless chicken breasts cut into strips, with a marinade made from four tablespoons of honey, two tablespoons of rice vinegar, two tablespoons of soy sauce and one tablespoon of sesame oil.

Soak the chicken in these ingredients for 30 minutes. Then heat the sesame oil in a frying pan and cook the meat on high for around five minutes, adding the marinade. Finely chop a large carrot, a bunch of spring onions, half a cucumber and half a Chinese lettuce, so they’re about the size of matchsticks for an authentic Chinese crunch! You can then toss the warm chicken with a crushed garlic clove, a 2.5cm piece of grated ginger, two tablespoons of sesame seeds, a small bunch of roughly chopped coriander and the chopped veg. Drizzle over the juices from the pan and it’s ready to eat.

Roasted chicken with a zesty twist

Another great marinade combination is lemon and honey, and these sweet and sticky chicken thighs will go down a treat with the kids. For this dish, which serves two to three, you’ll need six chicken thighs with the bone in and skin on. Marinate the thighs with a tablespoon of black pepper, the juice of two lemons, a squeeze of honey, a spoon of grainy mustard, two crushed garlic cloves in a large roasting tin.

Season with salt to taste and cook for 45 minutes at 200°C/400F/Gas 6, turning half way through. Meanwhile, remove the flesh from two or three preserved lemons, cut the remaining skin into strips and add to a handful of olives and a handful of parsley. When the chicken is ready, serve sprinkled with the lemony mixture. This can be served with a green salad.

We love chicken dishes here at home too. Most of the time though, it’s fried chicken for us. I marinate the chicken pieces in brine (salt + water) for at least an hour before deep frying and they always come out juicy and tasty.